with a specific action trigged onclick on the link element.
I'm looking for a way to select the text inside the span without triggering the link.NB. I can't change the code, but, only the CSS.

UPDATE

I'm sorry I wasn't able to specify my aim.
I need to select text, in order to copy and paste it from a site that I can't directly modify.
I know how to do it via javascript, but unfortunately the only thing I can do is to force IE to set a different CSS style.
I'm trying to find a way to change the elements visualization in order to allow mouse selection and prevent the event click to be called.
For example: increasing the <span> height to make it "taller" than the <a> overflowing its parent border.
I'm going to try with CSS position: relative; and re-sizing.
A better solution could be change the z-index of the <span> moving it on a higher layer than the <a>, but I think it is not possible to change it for parent/child elements on IE.